Poems by Meher Manda
poison berries?
orange diffused at the foot of the plastic chair. durable. timeless.
summer — monsoon — winter — ma’s dupatta a frayed relic — a hand latches onto
a piece of history — orange
a canvas of leaf green. its promise: orange
a child limp on the stillness of a photograph.
her memory: orange
before the mother that was
before the mother that was
before the mother that was
their bloodline: orange
the tree promises life. timeless. enduring. its poison: orange
a desire for the tactile, the firm grasp of time within one’s fingers is only
a photograph — suspended,
a nail running through its arrested composition.
this tear: orange
off-camera, metal scrapes the remnants of the yard, on-camera it offers: orange
the artist feeds on a photograph for more
say what this memory of one’s own forgone story? orange.
when are the poison berries?
a house into which a woman come through a child interrupted
walls kiss other walls young once, a flying dupatta caught in a photo
and become home freeze-framed in memory unsmiling, an aberration
manufacturing isolation tightly congealed in loose scraps testified to story
birthing a throughline while the body grows enduring
one kernel leafs a new leaf, disappears a memory, learn
to another true turns obsolete, in belonging to call this evidence
algaed familia her knowledge, in high esteem use to prove
kinship with tools a self, waning time, its slippery hold
a robust engineering restricted to recollection a mutating grasp
stockpile for the future to remember again and again in image.
what are the poison berries?
what can grow can one day turn invasive.
what suspends like a drop of orange dew from the green-lit sky is only a fruit.
what looks like a fruit, reads like a fruit, smells like a fruit, is a fruit.
[in so far as you can eat it, in so far as I can eat it]
what fruit eaten can kill a child is a not-fruit. call it berry. suffix it with poison.
[don’t eat it, don’t eat it, don’t eat it]
what are words that a cat can’t read but a song in an alien tongue.
what is song but a tongue set to music.
what is fruit of the songbird but a poison to your tongue.
what is a songbird but an alien tongue dancing.
what is an alien tongue but the unnamable grip of memory.
what is memory but a reminder that before you, there was a you, and even before a less you-er you but you nonetheless.
what is orange but a color so beautiful you drip it on your tongue.
what is beautiful will kill you. call it berry. suffix it with poison.
read it again and again. disregard its instructions, your best defenses.
bite the soft flesh of orange, let it bleed all over the archive.
what is an archive but a collection of truths left unsaid.
where are the poison berries?
in family, native
to Mexico, to South America, to the Caribbean
invading room, taking up space
naturalized in places
in memory unspooling a flurry
produced in tight clusters
in likeness, in the possibility of before
a desirable addition to gardens
in past regurgitated as a photograph
attracting butterflies and hummingbirds
in the harsh erosion of cement border
feeding songbirds without ill-effect
in chair, left unoccupied
tolerating light shade, though desiring full sun
in burrowed corners of home
grows as an annual shrub
in living, leaving, returning
a spreading, sweeping, evergreen shrub
in the hallowed hallways of time
blooming summer to fall
in contested records
standing upright, erect
in stories turned gooey from oversharing
drooping blue to violet flowers
why are the poison berries?
lacerate your own life with the needle of time and selective memory. expose its innards into a burst of fragmented optics. arrange in order of linearity. find the uncomfortable missing. scope out sadness in the camera’s finitude. realize your own mind is manipulating truth which is story which is true which is also a little bit false. the storyteller in you is itching to close gaps. abandon chronology. arrange in order of movement. let leaf sprout a creeping vine. find its incessant growing a lovely metaphor to living. obsess over this representation. scourge the growth into shape. choke on the impossibility of this undertaking. discern that an analogy once made cannot be dismissed. struggle to breathe in this endless overlay of image. wisen up. recuse yourself from this dance of taming wilderness. embrace a third, living possibility. renounce order or method or form. understand no single thing can be the whole thing. allow truth to be whatever you want it to be. shape from past a meaning of your own making. stretch the elastic into a capsule. sit on it and fly away. chew yourself, inside out. lay it out to dry. hibernate.